Breakthrough: Conquering Your Creative Demons and Achieving Success

By J. Dharma Kelleher

Don't let self-doubt sabotage your writing career.

 

Breakthrough: Conquering Your Creative Demons and Achieving Success is the must-read guide for every writer struggling with imposter syndrome, writer's block, and creative self-doubt. Written by experienced crime novelist Dharma Kelleher, this powerful book will help you confront your fears and insecurities, and put you on the path to a more fulfilling and successful writing career.

 

In Breakthrough, Dharma shares her own personal journey of overcoming substance abuse, PTSD, and the self-doubt that often plagues writers. Drawing on her years as a practicing Buddhist, she provides deep insights and practical steps to help you build a strong mindset, increase your confidence, and push through your limits.

 

Focusing on mindset, not craft, this book will equip you with the tools you need to write with greater ease, joy, and success. Whether you're struggling to get started, feeling overwhelmed by the creative process, or simply seeking a more positive and fulfilling writing journey, Breakthrough has the answers you've been looking for.

You deserve to love your work, to be proud of your creations, and to enjoy the journey every step of the way. Get ready to breakthrough and become the writer you've always wanted to be!

 

So why wait? Buy your copy of Breakthrough today and start your journey towards emotional and financial success as a writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Pariah Press
• Release date: Dec 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781952128158

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

If you want to skip this introduction, by all means, go for it. Basically, I’m going to explain who this book is for, why I wrote it, and what qualified me to write it. I also share my author journey to date, including many of the challenges and setbacks I’ve faced. I hope you find this book helps you.

I wrote Breakthrough primarily for those of us who write genre fiction—thrillers, fantasy, science fiction, romance, etc. However, if you write literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or even sales copy, you will still benefit from the lessons shared here. Creative self-doubt affects most of us regardless of what we write.

If you are a creative person in another medium, such as painting, graphic arts, sculpting, dance, or whatever, you may also get a lot out of this book. You may just need to translate my words to correspond to your specific media.

This book focuses on mindset and our emotional (and, dare I say, spiritual) journey as authors. It’s about breaking through the wall of negativity and self-doubt that plagues so many of us. This book is about helping you, not necessarily your bottom line. Changing your mindset may help you sell more books and get bigger advances and more reviews. It may not. But either way, you will enjoy the process a lot more.

So, what qualifies me to write this book?

Let me start by telling you what I am not. I am not a therapist. I don’t hold any advanced degrees. I am not a guru or life coach or spiritual advisor or Zen master. Take anything and everything I say with a grain of salt.

As of the time of this writing, I don’t make a living with my writing. I’m not a bestseller. I’ve never won any awards for my writing. Not one. Haven’t even been nominated. I don’t have an MFA. I’m not one of the cool kids who gets reviewed by the New York Times or interviewed by NPR’s Terry Gross.

Here’s one more thing I am not. I am not a naturally confident person. I have struggled with insecurity since early childhood. Perhaps I was born with it.

I was one of those sensitive kids, the ones that bullies like to pick on. And they picked on me a lot. From first grade through my senior year in high school, I had a target painted on my back. I was quiet and introverted. I loved to read and learn, found science and math breathlessly fascinating, and was a natural at language arts. My teachers adored me, which only made my social life worse. No one wants to be the teacher’s pet when it means getting shoved into a locker in gym class.

Speaking of gym class, I was not athletic at all. I was the shortest kid in my grade every year. I was a slow runner, couldn’t throw or hit a baseball, and was the one always picked last for teams.

On top of all of this, I am transgender and in a same-sex marriage. I’ve dealt with abuse, bullying, and discrimination my entire life. I share this not to elicit your pity but to make a point.

I understand what it’s like to live with self-doubt. I know what it means to look at everyone else and feel like a fraud and a mistake. My mother was fond of saying, You have so much potential. Why don’t you use it? No matter what I did, it was never good enough.

I struggled with depression and trauma for much of my teens and twenties. Beginning my gender transition helped tremendously in some respects, but it also brought more abuse, harassment, and trauma into my life. I became an alcoholic and codependent, eventually leading to two failed suicide attempts.

Then things changed. I remember lying in a hospital bed after getting my stomach pumped, the taste of liquid charcoal still on my lips. The doctors and nurses kept asking why I tried to end my life. I didn’t have a suitable answer. Or at least, I felt my answers weren’t good enough.

But I eventually came up with an answer. I didn’t really want to die so much as I wanted to stop the unbearable emotional pain that I had struggled with my whole life. This feeling of being a born loser (as a kid, I felt a kinship to Charlie Brown). Of worthlessness. Of never being good enough at anything. Of hopelessness.

The first change I made was to stop drinking and start going to Alcoholics Anonymous. Not saying it’s the right answer for every alcoholic. But it helped me. I attended other 12-step groups, such as Al-Anon, Codependents Anonymous, and Adult Children of Alcoholics. I joined an informal women’s support group. Eventually, I separated from and divorced my abusive husband.

Most important of all, I began a journey of self-discovery, healing, and exploration. I read tons of self-help books. Some were helpful, others not so much. I explored a range of spiritual and religious paths, including Wicca, A Course in Miracles, and Buddhism.

After a few years, I could honestly say I loved myself. I was a good person. A caring person. A creative person. I still had a few demons, areas of my life in which self-doubt stemming from trauma liked to creep in. I still do today after twenty-five years of sobriety.

I still have to deal with anxiety and PTSD from time to time. But it no longer holds me prisoner the way it once did. It doesn’t affect my professional life as a writer the way it used to. I can read my previously published books and truly enjoy them. I don’t think they’re all that and a bag of chips. But I enjoy reading them and appreciate why other people do too.

I first started writing when I was a teenager, typing out stories on an old manual Smith Corona typewriter. My first story was a blatant rip-off of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine. I dreamed of one day becoming a professional novelist. Every month, I read Writer’s Digest magazine from cover to cover, becoming a devotee of Lawrence Block’s fiction column. I scoured Writer’s Market for places where I could submit my stories. Along the way, I accumulated a nice stack of rejection letters.

In high school, I added acoustic guitar to my creative outlets. I had a natural talent and often played for friends and family. In college, I majored in journalism, while also taking creative writing and music courses. And then creative self-doubt crept in.

I sought gigs to make a little money playing guitar but didn’t know how to play electric. The public’s interest in folk rock was fading, replaced by the power rock ballads of the ‘80s. I felt out of my depth. What few gigs I secured made me feel like an imposter.

When I applied for journalism internships, I was rejected by all that I applied for. When I searched for a job post-graduation, all I could find was a minimum-wage position at a tiny rural radio station that made the fictional WKRP look like a corporate behemoth. My official title was news director, but I was the entire news staff. My duties comprised doing little more than rewriting stories in the local paper and working as the morning drive DJ.

Eventually, I shoved both the writing and the music aside. I got a horrendous job at a big corporation. When I came out as transgender, they fired me. For the next few years, I did what I had to in order to survive. Not all of it legal. I never had a career, just a long series of low-level jobs. What a failure I was.

Not until I was in my mid-forties did I once again take up writing. A friend invited me to take part in National Novel Writing Month. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a personal challenge event with thousands of participants all over the world. The goal is to write a fifty-thousand-word novel during the month of November.

It seemed like such a daunting challenge. I’d only written short stories when I was a teen. And here I was, not having written a story of any length for thirty years. Could I write a fifty-thousand-word novel in a month? Turned out I could. I hit my goal shortly after Thanksgiving in 2007. I still have the T-shirt.

That event relaunched my passion for writing career. For several years, I wrote stories and took part in local critique groups while learning the craft. I discovered there were many skills to master, including story structure, scene structure, dialogue, narration, and character development.

I reached the point of entertaining the idea of being published. I had grown up believing that going through a traditional publisher was the only legitimate path to publication. So I began searching for a literary agent to represent me. I sent queries, synopses, and partial manuscripts to ninety literary agents before one agreed to represent me. While that may not be an uncommon statistic, it was a lot of rejection to deal with. A whole lotta no thank yous.

Eventually, one of the Big Five publishers bought my first two novels. I believed my ship had come in. But no. The publisher did little to promote the book, and they ended the series after two books. I wondered if I’d ever be a real author with a career.

But I refused to give up. They say that failure isn’t getting knocked down but not getting back up when you do. So, despite the blows to my ego from the poor sales and series cancellation, I pressed ahead. I came up with a new series. But this time, I chose to become my own publisher. I hired a team of editors, cover designers, et al. I’ve been indie ever since.

I have struggled with imposter syndrome. Harsh reviews have sent me questioning whether I had what it took to be a real writer. Was I smart enough, talented enough, and educated enough to write stories that readers would love?

Then I learned to use the tools I gained in my recovery from alcoholism and from Buddhism and my support groups. These tools helped me dismantle the negativity that ensnares so many creative people.

I now enjoy writing, even when it gets hard. I enjoy creating interesting characters and telling compelling stories. I even enjoy editing those stories, fixing plot holes, and cutting down info dumps. I enjoy sharing my work with the world. I can read back through my previously published works and feel a sense of pride for what I’ve created. I don’t feel the need to compare myself or my work to that of other authors. I don’t view my books as less-than.

Maybe one day I will make a living from my writing. Maybe I’ll eventually be nominated and win an award. Maybe one day the New York Times will review one of my books. Or maybe not. Either way, I’ve learned to trust the process and savor the journey every step along the way.

I am proud to be part of an amazing community of writers. We are such fascinating people with stories to tell. Each of us has our own unique author journey.

But so many of us suffer from creative self-doubt despite writing remarkable stories and despite so many of us winning awards, accolades, and financial success. That insidious voice of self-doubt creeps in to sabotage our enjoyment of the process and the appreciation of our work.

This doesn’t have to be the case.

You can reclaim enjoyment of writing. You can once again feel a sense of pride toward your finished stories, whether they’ve been published or not. You deserve to be free of the fear of being found out as an imposter.

So, I am sharing what I’ve learned about overcoming self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness. I’m offering you the tools that work for me to face down those voices that tell us we are imposters in danger of being found out. I’m showing you a way through or around the blocks that come up to impede your journey.

I am not a therapist or licensed counselor, but I know what it feels like to struggle with these negative thoughts daily. I found a way through and will show you that way.

I can’t guarantee miracles. I can only show you what worked for me. It took me years to work through my insecurities. And I still struggle with fears, mostly financial. The voices of depression, anxiety, and trauma still call my name. But by using the tools I’ve acquired over the past twenty-five years, I keep them at bay.

Beyond these tools, I address several aspects of the author’s journey that can be a minefield of negativity then show you how to navigate your way through them.

Some of what I share might seem a bit woo-woo. That’s okay. I’ll try to keep the woo to a minimum, but sometimes, new ideas can feel foreign or ridiculous or a waste of time. I used to think that gratitude lists were as corny as Cobb County, Georgia (apologies to residents of Cobb County). But they turned out to be remarkably effective in combating negativity. So try to keep an open mind.

This book is no substitute for professional help. As I’ve said before, I am not a counselor, therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist. I hold no advanced degrees. My recovery program included seeing a therapist and even going on antidepressants for a time. They helped me.

If you are struggling with depression (especially suicidal depression), bipolar disorder, PTSD, or some other severe mental disorder, it may be a good idea to get professional help, if you can. This is your journey. Assess your needs as best you can and get the help you require.

One last point. Give yourself time. Time to familiarize yourself with the tools and ideas I share. Time to undo the damage from years or decades of trauma and other negativity. Time to heal. Time to grow. These are tools, not a cure. Take what you like and leave the rest.

I wish you all the best in your creative journey.

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WHAT IS CREATIVE SELF-DOUBT

Before we start exploring the solutions, we must understand the problem that we are dealing with. imposter syndrome and writer’s block may seem like different issues, but they are different expressions of the same issue: creative self-doubt.

What is creative self-doubt? At its most basic, creativity is fear. Fear of the uncertainty that is inherent in creativity. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of acting without permission. Fear